Trump gets bump in the polls

The ground of the 2016 race for President seemed to shift a bit more on Wednesday, as new polls showed Donald Trump grabbing the overall lead in two key swing states, as the GOP nominee also made new gains nationally, raising fresh questions about the durability of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the White House.

Loud, enthusiastic crowd in Canton, OH. And Trump seems very upbeat – and, in a rarity lately, started by touting good polls

Despite health issues and some recent missteps, Hilary Clinton up until this week could still point to polling data that showed her with a healthy advantage – but that has changed in the month of September, as new data from major polling organizations showed a shift in favor of Trump, both nationally and in states like Ohio:

Certainly we need to have the big reminder for everyone that all sorts of things could go on over the next seven weeks and change the dynamics of this race – but as I wrote a few days ago, for all those who have insisted that this election was all but over (in favor of Hillary Clinton), these polls show something much different.

“This cycle has taught me not to make as many assumptions,” wrote elections expert Nathan Gonzales.

“Let’s just wait for more data,” he added on Twitter.

Want polls from CO, NH, PA, VA, WI. If Trump breaks through in one of those states, then he's got something.

“It’s not totally clear how much Clinton’s “bad weekend” affected the polls,” wrote polling guru Nate Silver on Twitter, as he said it’s “clear” that Trump is “still gaining ground.”

The way the map is evolving at this point, the most important state for Clinton in terms of winning might be Pennsylvania, where Clinton has held a solid lead.

But we have not had recent polling in the Keystone State, what might be Clinton’s firewall.

This election has reminded me a bit of the legal challenge to the Obama health law a few years ago. As that case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a lot of legal experts said it could never succeed.

But once we had the first day of arguments before the justices in Washington, D.C., all of a sudden a lot of very smart people realized that the law could be thrown out.

In many ways, I see a similar thing at play here – that a lot of people simply wrote off Donald Trump, and kept telling themselves that he would never win the GOP nomination, let alone in November.

But with less than two months to go, here he is – whether you think he has faults and weaknesses, he has as much of a chance to win on November 8 as Hillary Clinton.